The vast majority of Republicans want Donald Trump to be president. They’ve repeatedly told the pollsters, they’ve turned out in huge numbers for the GOP nominee’s rallies, they’ve given him a record-breaking number of small donations, and they are trying to help him win. Some of them were for Rubio, some of them were for Kasich, and a lot of them were for Cruz, but they have come together in an effort to save the country from Hillary Clinton.

A small minority of Republicans do not want Donald Trump to be president. They prefer Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately for most of the Republican Party, this small group of angry dissenters includes many of the people at the top of the party — officeholders, major donors, “strategists,” and “conservative” pundits. These people have been able to leverage their connections with the mainstream press to repeatedly attack Trump — even though they refuse to say anything nice about Hillary.

The Republican Party is led by people who have more in common with the Clintons than with the GOP base.

Their fundamental problem is that they are closer to Hillary on most issues than they are to Republican voters. The honorable thing for them to do would be to leave the GOP altogether and work with the Democrats — as some like Andrew Sullivan have.

But they’re unwilling to do that. Instead, they take Hillary’s side on every issue while claiming to be pushing the “conservative” line. Furthermore, it gives them an incentive to talk about everything in personal terms — as if they would have supported someone like, say, Huckabee, if the former Arkansas governor had been nominated, even though that’s not true. So instead of having an honest discussion as to whether the GOP should be a globalist party or a nationalist party, everything dissolves into personal attacks.

When this election is over, the vast majority of Republicans are going to remember that their supposed leaders — the same officeholders, millionaires, and pundits who told them that they had to “come together” and support John McCain and Mitt Romney — refused to do the same for Donald Trump. They will know that what they have long suspected is true — the Republican Party is led by people who have more in common with the Clintons than with the GOP base. And that knowledge will affect the future of the GOP for years to come.